E73 
.C72 



THE ORIGIN 

OF THE 

Mound Builders. 



A. THESIS 

BY 

ALFRED O. QOFFIN, M.A., 

Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, 
Rodney, Mississippi. 



1BB9, 



CINCINNATI, OHIO : 
Elm Street Printing Company, No. 176 Elm Street. 
1889. 



Daniel Murray, 
Washington, D. C. 
1925. 



The Origin I Mound Builders. 



i. 

The OyCoaad-biLilders of the 3/Ci ssissippi galley.. 

"To ask or search, I blame thee not ; for heaven 
Is as the book of God before <:hee set, 
Wherein to read his wondrous works." 

Let any traveler start from Wisconsin and traverse the 
Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, and cross the 
country from the Alleghenies to the Western Plateau, and 
throughout his course he will find thousands of mounds 
of earth with a conical or pyramidal apex, and containing 
within their interior relics of human remains and inventions. 

When a traveler asks the origin and reasons of these 
mounds, he is almost invariably met with the enigmatical 
answer, "Indian mounds." They were not made by the 
Indians whom Columbus found on this continent ; in fact, 
their origin was unknown to the Red Man, since they found 
them here, and they looked as recent to the first European 
adventurers, with the remains of ancient forests on their sum- 
mits, as they do to us now. 

When a boy, I have stood and wondered at the stupen- 
dous magnificence of the Mound-builders' rude art, in crown- 
ing a beautiful hill with a throne for their chieftain, or perhaps 
a temple to their god of nature, or possibly a sacrificial altar : 
on which to shed human blood to appease an irate divinity, or 
to dedicate the triumphal march of a conquering hero. Since 
a man, I have wandered among the thousands of mounds, 
from the Great Lakes to the Mexican Gulf, and have pon- 
dered among the unclassified tumuli on the plains of Texas 
that stretch away toward the Rio Grande, and have wondered 
if these are the watch-towers of a gigantic antediluvian 



4 



prairie-dog contemporaneous with the Deinosaurs, or if they 
are the mute landmarks of a mysterious people who trafficked 
here while Cheops was building on the Nile. While modern 
science is endeavoring to classify the ethnic relations of the 
Mound-builders, it is also aware that that hypothesis alone 
will have credence, that accords best with the cumulative 
evidence of those most infallible guides, comparative crani- 
ology and philology. 

The science of craniology recognizes three, and sometimes 
four, kinds of skulls, determined by the ratio of length to the 
breadth ; that is, the length of any skull being represented 
by 100, the "cephalic index" is the proportion of this 100 
covered by the breadth. Skulls with a cephalic index between 
74 and 78 are said to be mesecephalic, because this is the 
average of mankind. If the index is above 78, they are said 
to be brachycephalic ; if below 74, they are dolichocephalic, or 
long-headed. The dolichocephalic, according to Prof. Retzius, 
are found in the eastern part of this continent, from Labrador 
through the Antilles to Paraguay. The brachycephalic or short 
heads, are found in the West, from Behring's Strait, through 
Oregon and California, Mexico, Central America and Chili, 
to Terra del Fuego. It must be remembered that the terms 
" brachycephalic " and ''dolichocephalic" are not absolute, 
but only relative as to length and breadth, for a dolichoceph- 
alic cranium may be actually shorter than a brachycephalic 
one. 

The Caribs, who inhabit the shores of the Caribbean Sea, 
are a nautical people, who conquered the Antilles, as is attest- 
ed by their war implements being found there, and entered 
North America by the southeast, and spread nortli to Canada, 
giving rise to the red Indian, whose dolichocephalic skulls 
and roving habits agree precisely with the Caribs of Vene- 
zuela. The brachycephalic type is supposed to have entered 
America by Behring's Strait, giving rise to the Aleutians and 
Esquimaux, and passing through Washington Territory and 
California has characterized the Hualpa Indians of the latter, 
and the semi-civilized cliff-dwellers of Colorado and Pueblo 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



5 



Indians of New Mexico. The high degree of civilization 
which Cortez found in Mexico, the unnumbered temples of 
the Montezumas, the splendor of Toltec civilization, the paved 
roads of Peru, and the gilded palaces of the sun-worshipers 
of Lake Titicaca, all show that the brachycephalic civilization 
of the Pacific Slope was as distinct from the culture of the hunt- 
ing tribes of the Atlantic, as though separated by an ocean. 
In the Chicago Academy of Science are a number of Mound- 
builders' skulls, taken from mounds in Ohio, Indiana, Ken- 
tucky and Illinois. There are no other skulls of any other 
race in this country like them — with scarcely any forehead 
whatever, but with a sudden slope from the superciliary 
ridges backward. These skulls are neither dolichocephalic 
nor brachycephalic ; therefore we can neither look to the 
ancestry of the Red Men, nor to the Asiatic type, for the pro- 
genitors of the Mound-builders, who may justly be considered 
the autochthones of America. 

Before attempting to account for the presence of the Mound- 
builders in the Mississippi Valley, we will describe a few of 
their mounds, the only history they have left us. 

These mounds are divided into three classes, according to 
their use. The most northern remains of the Mound-builders 
yet discovered are on the southern shore of Lake Supe- 
rior, and in the valley of the Wisconsin River. All of 
these mounds are representations of animals on a gigantic 
scale — hence we will call them effigy mounds — and seem to 
represent their religious rites. No other mounds are found 
here, which was not a place of residence, and this character 
of mound is not found elsewhere except the great Serpent 
Mound in Adams County, Ohio. Around Chicago the mounds 
are not more than twelve feet high, but in Iowa they were so 
plentiful that the French named the river in that State "Des 
Moines," which means "the mounds." Where St. Louis 
stands was once so thickly studded with mounds, that the 
city has been called "The Mound City. " In the State of 
Mississippi the largest river was so thickly strewn with 
these prehistoric ruins that the Choctaws called it " Yazoo- 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



okhinnah" — "The River of Ancient Ruins." In Illinois the 
mounds are oblong, square, ellipsoidal and conical. Cahokia, 
the largest mound in the United States, stood here. It formed 
a' parallelogram with sides respectively seven hundred and 
five hundred feet long and ninety feet high, and covered 
fifteen acres — larger than the largest pyramid in Egypt. On 
the top of this mound was probably a temple, for many bones 
and funeral vases were taken from the interior ; so we call 
this a temple mound. The banks of the Ohio, Scioto, Wabash 
and Muskingum are so thickly covered with mounds and 
tumuli, that Squier and Davis estimate that Ohio alone 
contains ten thousand, and plainly indicate that this was the 
capital of the Mound-builders' empire. A number of these 
are conical mounds, and the bones and charcoal indicate that 
they were sacrificial mounds. Near Newark, Ohio, occur the 
most stupendous of the Mound-builders' works, covering two 
square miles, and containing walls, pyramids, circles and 
turrets, which in our day, with machinery and horse-power, 
would require many thousand men many months to perform. 

One of the wonders of the world is the great Serpent Mound 
in Adams County, Ohio, which stamps the religious character 
of the vanished race. The total length of the serpent is four- 
teen hundred and fifteen feet, and the distance between the 
jaws one hundred feet. It lies on the crest of a hill, and its folds 
correspond with the windings of the hill. Is this serpent 
an emblem of the one that plays such a part in the mythol- 
ogy of the old world? "This symbol prevails in Egypt, 
Greece, Assyria, and among the superstitions of the Celts, 
Hindoos and Chinese. Wherever native religions have had 
their scope, this symbol is sure to appear. " 

On the Ohio River, twelve miles from Wheeling, in West 
Virginia, stands the Grave Creek Mound, seventy feet high 
and a thousand feet in circumference. This was a signal 
mound, from the summit of which signal fires could be seen 
far down the valley, and others transmitted the message in 
like manner, till it reached Cahokia on the Mississippi. 

The growth of civilization has always been along the courses 



* 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 7 



)f great rivers — the Nile, Euphrates, Ganges, Hoangho, 
Danube, the Mississippi and Ohio. The Mound-builders 
were an agricultural people, for maize has been found in the 
mounds, and nowhere do we find the mounds where maize 

ill not grow. Where the population of the United States 
is growing densest every year, there, too, the Mound-builders 
reached their acme, showing that what we consider natural 
advantages so did they. Ohio, the second State in the Union, 
was likewise their capital, with its ten thousand mounds to-day 
narking the spot where flourished their vanished cities. 

They were an agricultural people, because no other occupa- 
ion could have supported so vast a concourse of people. Their 
government was despotic ; for when we consider that they 
lad no metallic tools or beasts of burden, but that these mounds 
vere raised by earth scraped from the surface and carried up 
n baskets, we are bound to conclude that these mounds are 
he work of slaves ; for, studying the history of Egypt, we 
now that no wealth or power on earth could have erected 
hese pyramids by freemen working in competition for frec- 
nen's wages. 

Two thousand men were employed three years in carrying 

stone from Elephantis to Sais, and the building of one pyra- 
mid required the labor of three hundred and sixty thousand 
nen for twenty years. 

They understood political economy and the division of 
xbor ; else so many men could not have been fed, while 
heir labor was withdrawn from production and locked ud in 
his yearly labor, unless there was a powerful reserve force 
ke Joseph to store the granaries in time of plenty. 

They were a commercial people ; for in these mounds we 
r nd copper from Lake Superior, shells from the Mexican 
Gulf, mica from the Alleghenies, iron pyrites from Missouri 
id obsidian from Mexico. 

They were an inventive people ; for we find specimens of 
ioth, woven from a vegetable fibre, in several different 
atterns ; and they were not warlike, for most of the instru- 
i lents taken from the mounds are of agricultural pattern. 



8 The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



They were not of the same stock as the red Indian, because 
the Indian, even in the nineteenth century, is still in the Stone 
Age, roving in feral tribes, and starving to death annually 
rather than taint his inherited dignity by manual labor. The 
Indian's implements are of flint, and always on the surface of 
the ground. The Mound-builder's implements are of argil- 
lite, and found beneath the surface and gravel. The Indian's 
habitation is never durable enough to be traced by his suc- 
ceeding progeny, while the Mound-builder has left his mark 
which ten thousand years will but intensify. 

The Mound-builders can not be identified with^the Pueblo 
Indians, because the pottery of the Puebloes is corrugated and 
indented, and never has the semblance of any animal form 
whatever ; while that of the Mound-builders is striated, and 
eminently characterized by animal forms and statuettes of 
the human form divine. They can not be classed with the 
Esquimaux, because the Esquimaux are a strictly Orarian 
people, and we have no evidence of their ever having been 
aught else. 

"The brain is the seat of mental activity, and we place the 
seat of the intellectual faculties in the anterior lobe ; of the 
propensities which link us to the brute, in the middle lobe ; 
and of those which appertain to the social affections, in the 
posterior lobe. The predominance of any one of these 
divisions in a people would stamp them as either eminently 
intellectual, eminently cruel, or eminently social. " From 
an examination of the few authentic skulls of the Mound- 
builders, we are confident that these people were neither 
eminent for great virtues nor great vices, but were a mild, 
inoffensive race, who would fall an easy prey to a crafty and 
cruel foe. The Mound-builders entered the Mississippi 
Valley by way of Mexico, being drawn thither by the superior 
attraction of the soil and climate of our river terraces and 
bottoms, and they remained here until crowded out by the 
savage hunting tribes of red Indians, when they retraced their 
steps to Mexico and developed that higher intellectual and 
architectural skill which we will now consider. 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



9 



And now, having hastily glanced at a very few of the tens 
of thousands of mounds familiar to every inhabitant of the 
Mississippi Valley, we will follow the trail of the Mound- 
builders as evinced by their works, through Phillips County, 
Arkansas, four miles from Helena, thence to Red River, 
where they disappear. 

Taking up the trail again at the Hollywood plantation, near 
Saint Joseph, Louisiana, in Tensas Parish, we find ten mounds 
in a circle facing the temple. A few miles southward, facing 
Natchez, in Catahoula Parish, is another group. Crossing 
Louisiana, we enter Texas, and from the Trinity to the Colo- 
rado River there are millions of mounds, all of a conical form, 
that have baffled ethnologists for the last fifty years. They 
are from one to five feet in height, and from thirty to one hun- 
dred and forty feet in diameter. All scientists who have 
examined them have pronounced them the " inexplicable 
mounds. " During the summer of '87 and '88 I have traveled 
for days among the same mysterious mounds in Texas, 
stretching in an unbroken line toward the Rio Grande, and 
have pronounced them "landmarks" that indicated the line 
of departure of the Mound-builders, in their migration across 
the treeless prairies. 

This conclusion brings us to consider the Mound-builders 
after the migration, in their new home. 



II. 



"Nations melt 
From Power's high pinnacle, when they have felt 
The sunlight for a while, and downward go." 

We know that the Mound-builders had a knowledge of 
Mexico before their southwestern migration, because obsidian 
was found in their mounds, and this mineral is found only in 
Mexico. 



10 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



No links are so conclusive in connecting the Mound-build- 
ers of the Mississippi Valley with those of Mexico, as the 
truncated, pyramidal mounds. True to the historical tradi- 
tions that all great centers of civilization have been along the 
great river basins, we would naturally turn to the water- 
courses of Mexico to resume the trend of our narrative, and 
we are not disappointed. 

On the Panuca River, near the Gulf of Tampico, Mr. Nor- 
man found twenty-five mounds, some of them covering two 
acres, and built of earth as those in the Mississippi Valley, 
though some were faced with stones. According to the 
Smithsonian Report of 1873, across the river from Vera 
Cruz occurs a locality of mounds covering three square 
leagues. The pyramids of Papantla and Tuscapan are of 
solid masonry with steps on the outside. The pyramid of 
Cholula is truncated, its base being one thousand four hundred 
and twenty-three feet long, covering forty-four acres. Its per- 
pendicular height is one hundred and seventy-two feet, and 
its truncated summit contains more than one acre ; this was 
the Mecca of the valley of Anahuac. The hanging gardens 
of Tezcuco had a summit reached by five hundred and 
twenty steps, and crowned by a fountain. Nezahualeoyotl built 
a pyramidal temple nine stories high, dedicated to "The 
Unknown God, the Cause of Causes." In the ruins of Mitla, 
Oaxaca, Guingola, and numerous others, we have numerous 
ruins of different construction ; but to say that they are the 
works of different races of people is saying too much. All the 
inhabitants of Nahuac were kindred tribes, and spoke the 
Nahuatl language, though entering the valley at different 
times in different clans. Winchell states that the Mongoloids 
entered North America by Behring's Strait and spread east and 
southward ; that the beginning of this wave is lost in obscu- 
rity, but in due succession the Nahuas moved forward. The 
Toltecs followed and crowded the Nahuas through the Isthmus 
• of Tehuantepec into Yucatan and Central America. The 
Astecs followed the Toltecs in occupancy. While the Astecs 
crowded on the Toltecs, these pushed farther the Nahuas, 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



11 



and the Nahuas pressed on the rear of their unknown 
and mysterious predecessors, and so forth to the borders of 
Chili. Also another branch of Mongoloids entered South 
America by the Polynesian route, crossed the Andes, 
ascended the Atlantic Slope to the Caribbean Sea, crossed 
to the Antilles and entered North America by the Tortugas 
and Florida, ascended the Atlantic Slope and began war on 
the peaceful inhabitants of the Pacific Slope, when the white 
man arrived and interrupted this symmetrical rotation and 
sequence of invasion. I beg leave differ with regard to a part 
of this plan, on grounds adduced further on. 

The Toltec clan was among the first to enter the Valley of 
Mexico or Nahua, followed by the Chichimecs, who were 
succeeded by the seven clans or tribes who dwelt in the valley 
at the same time, and who probably are connected with "the 
seven mysterious cities of Cibola" in New Mexico. 

These tribes were the Xochimilcos, Cholcos, Tepanecos, 
Acolhuas, Tezcucans, Tlascaltecas and Astecs. For political 
strength the Astecs, Tezcucans and Tlascans formed a trium- 
virate, and each had their capital city, viz. : Tezcuco, Tlasca, 
and Tenochtitlan. The Astec clan in its peregrinations had 
kept the name Astec, in honor of their ancient home, Aztlan 
or Atlantis, but their priest, Aacatl, decreed that they 
should be called Mexicatls, in honor of their war god, Mexitli y 
because he had enabled them to conquer their brethren. 

In the midst of the beautiful Lake Tezcuco, on an island, 
they built their national capital, Tenochtitlan, which the 
Spaniards called "the most beautiful spot on earth." Cortez 
destroyed this beautiful city and built the modern city of 
Mexico on its ruins. It was here that the ill-starred "Moteuc- 
.zoma" — whom the Spaniards have misspelled Montezuma — 
poured the wealth of his kingdom into the coffers of Cortez, 
and in return suffered the most humiliating degradation and 
death recorded on the pages of history. 

Tenochtitlan was a great city. Two thousand temples, 
one hundred palaces and a thousand sumptuous dwellings 



12 



have melted before the desecrating Spaniards as a mirage 
before a thirsty traveler. 

The priests, in their too zealous zeal to uproot polytheism, 
wreaked their holy vengeance upon temples and idols ; and 
history can produce no parallel to the vandalism that would 
sack the temples of all the written documents and ideographic 
paintings and make a bonfire of them on the public plaza, on 
the plea that they were from the devil ! 

The zenith ol New World civilization became a setting 
sun before a savage Christianity. The path of the Christian 
became a sirocco, the garden spot of the world became a 
holocaust. 

Tenochtitlan, the city of palaces, the capital of the 
Valley of Anahuac, was razed to the ground, and the testi- 
mony of a thousand years of civilization was as completely^ 
lost to the modern world as the buried island of Atlantis, 
and by a Christian nation ! 

It matters little with which particular tribe of Anahac the 
Mound-builders have become identified, since all the Nahuatl 
tribes were Mound-builders, and were forging a high civiliza- 
tion out of Nature herself. 

The differentiation of the Mound-builders' intellectuality, 
the gradual increments of their power of specialization, would 
naturally improve an earth mound by facing it with stone, 
and in turn to build it entirely of stone, and finally truncate 
a solid pyramid, crown its top with a palace or a temple, and 
its terraces with fountains and hanging gardens. It is but 
natural that the pottery of the Ohio mounds, with their rude 
images of animals and things, would suggest the association 
of several such images to record a thought, and, as civilization 
advanced, to resolve itself into the curious hieroglyphics of 
the Astecs. The effigy mounds of Wisconsin were but an 
inherent impulse to perpetuate their symbols of worship 
upon the most lasting monuments known to their rude art — 
earth mounds. What could be more natural than that, as 
soon as stone temples took the place of earth mounds, they 
should emblazon those same symbols on the lasting rock? 

I 



The Origin oj the Mound Builders. 



13 



That same perseverance that could raise Cahokia and Grave 
Creek Mound has intensified itself in chiseling beautiful 
facades and frescoes out of solid porphyry, with no other tools 
than obsidian chisels. The bas-reliefs are as delicate as those 
cut by steel, and the paintings on the temples of Mexico of 
human faces, are as identical with the shape of the skulls in 
the museum in Chicago, with their retreating foreheads and 
prominent superciliary ridges, as a painting can be like a 
skull. 

The laws of the Astecs were written in blood by a Draco, 
and a historian who misrepresented facts was punished with 
death. Accepting the above as proof evident that the paint- 
ings are correct, the large nose of the statues will forever 
contradict the alliance of the Astecs or Mound-builders with 
the Mongoloids. Hereafter we shall use the word Mound- 
builders as a synonym for Astecs, since we believe we have 
established sufficiently the analogy. 

You ask, Then why have not the records of the Astecs pre- 
served their early history in the Mississippi Valley ? Such 
in all probability was the case, but the Spaniards burned 
every record they could find, and whatever history we have 
is fragmentary, and only such as escaped the diligence of the 
priests. We may marvel at first that the cupidity of the Span- 
iards should thus outweigh every other consideration of 
right and justice, but we must consider that this was the age 
of chivalry, just succeeding the Crusades, when all Europe 
turned knight-errants and went to war against the Saracens 
of Asia. It was the war of the Cross against the Crescent, 
when each Christian thought it his duty to kill a Turk, in 
order to plant the Cross in heathen lands. 

This fever struck chivalrous Spain, and no leader could 
have been found more imbued with the spirit than Hernando 
Cortez, and it was with this spirit that he entered Mexico — to 
win gold for his crown and the country for his church. Icono- 
clasm was his creed, gold his desire, and fire and the 
sword his argument. When he entered the sanctuaries of 
their temples, and offered the sacerdotal official the image of 



14 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



the Virgin, in an unknown tongue, as a substitute for their 
tutelary divinities, on their inability to comprehend his 
motives, he invariably overturned their altars, broke their idols, 
and, with the assumption of a man ordained by Jehovah, 
invoked the saints to let them be anathema maranatha. No 
cataclysm of nature since the destruction of Atlantis has 
been so blighting to the growth of a nation, or so completely 
annihilating to their past history, as the Spanish Conquest of 
the New World. 

Tenochtitlan, the mistress who demanded tribute of all 
Mexico, has vanished, and the Modern Mexico, phcenix-like, 
soars aloft with outstretched wings, and hovers over the earth 
with her music, then sinks with the last sad notes of the 
dying swan, to immolate herself, that she may rise from her 
ashes, to rise higher and sing clearer. 

A Catholic cathedral occupies the place of the Teocalli, but 
at what cost ! Ten thousand souls without the knowledge of 
an Evangel ; the canals of the New World Venice turned 
into a Golgotha; the beautiful lake of Tezcuco turned into a 
salt marsh, the hanging gardens and fountains of princes 
into cactus beds, and the history of a people blotted from 
the face of the earth ! 

The modern traveler, as he looks at the changed scenes in 
the Valley of Mexico, may truthfully say : 

"Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand 
Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy lethe." 



III. 

The C\/[eurid=biiilders in (Lentral ^(merica.. 

"Thou unrelenting Past ! 

Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain — 
And fetters, sure and fast, 

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



"Far in thy realm withdrawn, 

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom ; 
And glorious ages gone, 

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. 

"Full many a mighty name 

Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered : 
With thee are silent fame, 

Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared." 

While the Mayas of Yucatan and Central America spoke a 
different language from the Astecs, certain analogies in build- 
ing and invention warrant us in considering them at this 
point. 

The oldest civilization in America was in Yucatan, Hon- 
duras and Guatemala, and, according to Bancroft, the oldest 
city in the western world is Copan, which was in ruins, 
deserted, and overgrown by a dense tropical forest, at the tim e 
of the Spanish Conquest, three hundred and sixty years ago. 

The Mayas of Yucatan, according to their traditions, 
first arrived there 793 B. C. from "Tulapam." We don't 
know where " Tulapam " was ; but they must have come by 
sea, because the natives of Yucatan to-day speak a language 
exactly similar to that spoken by the extinct aborigines of 
Cuba, Hayti and Jamaica, when the Spaniards first arrived 
there. North of Guatemala stand the ancient ruins of Palen- 
que, the Mecca of Central America, whose facaded palaces and 
stuccoed temples are full of hieroglyphics and bas-reliefs, 
beautiful in ruins, telling the sad history of a vanished race 
who here offered sacrifice to Quetzalcohuatl, the nature god 
of the Mayas. 

Nepenthe rules here supreme. A tropical forest has torn 
asunder her pyramids, while trees nine feet in diameter 
have shot up in the midst of her buildings, and nine feet of 
vegetable mold fill the inner courts above the pavement, 
where sacerdotal processions, possibly before the birth of 
Phoenician commerce, swung their censers and performed 
their mysterious rites. 

A few words concerning Uxmal and its ruins will answer 
for the rest of Yucatan. The walls of this temple were nine 



16 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



feet thick, and the rich, sculptured facades are the finest in 
America. The sculptured portion covers twenty-four thou- 
sand square feet, while the terraced mound supporting the 
house contained over sixty thousand cubic yards of material ; 
and we must remember that these people had neither metallic 
tools nor beasts of burden. 

Nothing but the feeling of profoundest awe must fill the 
modern traveler, as he emerges from the depths and gloom 
of a tropical forest, and comes face to face with the massive 
walls of the pyramid of Copan, containing twenty-six million 
cubic feet of stone brought from a distant quarry, and whose 
base is six hundred and twenty-four feet by eight hundred 
and nine feet, with a tower one hundred and eighty-two feet, 
built of huge blocks of stone, surmounted by two huge trees 
rooted in its mold. 

Within its ruins were found fourteen statues, the largest 
thirteen feet four inches tall, and all covered with bas-reliefs 
and hieroglyphics whose workmanship is equal to that on 
the Egyptian pyramids. 

In front of the statues stand huge altars six feet square, 
divided into thirty-six tablets of hieroglyphics, which tell to 
the world their history; but they speak in an unknown tongue, 
so the traveler must surmise if these were the emblems of the 
Mayan pantheon, or the palace of a pre- Adamite man. 

The curtain falls, the traveler returns, and the aeons com- 
mence again their ceaseless cycles around mysterious Copan. 



IV. 

The £est Atlantis. 



"Man's steps are not upon thy paths ; thy fields 
Are not a spoil for him ; thou dost arise 

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields 
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 

And send him, shivering in thy playful spray, 
And howling to his gods, where haply lies 

His petty hope in some near port or bay, 

And dash him again to earth — there let him lie." 



The Origin of the Mound Builders . 



17 



Whence sprang the Mound-builders ? It is evident, after 
reading the foregoing, that a people who could reach such 
a degree of civilization, must have received an impetus from 
without, which makes us conclude that the Mound-builders 
migrated to America. 

"The Story of Atlantis, " as recorded by Plato in his 
Timceus, has been regarded as a myth, but seems destined to 
become genuine history. The translation of the Greek phi- 
losopher is as follows: — " Among the great deeds of Athens, 
of which recollection is preserved in our books, there is one 
which should be placed above all others. Our books tell that 
the Athenians destroyed an army that came across the Atlan_ 
tic Sea, and insolently invaded Europe and Asia, for this 
sea was then navigable, and beyond the straits where you 
place the Pillars of Hercules, there was an island larger than 
Asia (Minor) and Libya combined. From this island one 
could pass easily to other islands, and from these to the 
continent which lies around the interior sea. The sea (Medi- 
terranean) on this side the strait of which we speak, resem- 
bles a harbor with a narrow entrance ; but there is a genuine 
sea, and the land which surrounds it is a veritable continent. 
In the Island of Atlantis reigned three kings, with great and 
marvelous power. They had under their dominion the whole of 
Atlantis and other islands, and some parts of the continent. 
At one time their power extended into Libya, and into 
Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, and, uniting their whole force, 
they sought to destroy our whole country at a blow; but 
their defeat stopped the invasion and gave independence to 
all the countries this side the Pillars of Hercules. Afterward, 
in one day and one fatal night, there came mighty 
earthquakes and inundations which engulfed the war-like 
people. Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, and then 
that sea became inaccessible, so that navigation on it ceased, 
on account of the quantity of mud which the engulfed island 
left in its place." - . . : m 

Plutarch, in his " Life of Solon," relates that the Lawgiver 
learned this story of Atlantis from Egyptian priests. 



18 



Diodorus Siculus relates: — 4 'Over against Africa lies a 
very great island, in the vast ocean, many days' sail from 
Libya westward. The soil there is very fruitful, a great part 
whereof is mountainous, but much likewise champaign, which 
is the most sweet and pleasant part, for it is watered by sev- 
eral navigable streams, and beautiful with many gardens of 
pleasure, planted by divers sorts of trees and an abundance 
of orchards. The towns are adorned with many stately 
buildings and banqueting-houses, pleasantly situated in the 
gardens and orchards." 

Theopompos, who wrote in the fourth century B. C, tells 
substantially the same story, which was given by Silenus to 
the ancient king Midas, recorded by Aristotle. The Gauls 
possessed traditions on this subject, which were collected by 
the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first cen- 
tury before Christ. This record states that three distinct 
peoples dwelt in Gaul (France) : (i) The indigenous popula- 
tion, (2) The invaders from a distant island (Atlantis), (3) 
The Aryan Gauls. 

Marcellus, also, in a book on the Ethiopians, speaks 
of seven islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean near Europe, 
which we may undoubtedly identify with the Canaries ; 
but he adds: " The inhabitants of these islands preserve 
the memory of a much greater island, Atlantis, which 
had, for a long time, exercised dominion over the smaller 
ones. " 

Now all these ancient writers clearly state that a continent 
existed west of Africa, which was destroyed by a great cata- 
clysm. The tribes in Central America and Mexico, in Ven- 
ezuela, British and Dutch Guiana, distinctly describe these 
cataclysms, one by water, one by fire, and a third by winds. 
Catlin, in his "Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America," 
describes the tradition of such a cataclysm. 

The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his " Quatre Lettres 
surle Mexique," and 4 'Sources de l'Histoire Primitive du 
Mexique," has translated the " Teo Amoxtli," which is the 
Toltecan mythological history of the cataclysm of the 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



I9> 



Antilles. The festival of ' 1 Izcalli " was instituted to com- 
memorate this terrible calamity, in which li princes and peo- 
ple humbled themselves before the Divinity, and besought 
him not to renew the frightful convulsions." 

It is claimed that, by this catastrophe, an area larger than- 
France became engulfed, including the Lesser Antilles, the 
extensive banks at their eastern extremity, the peninsulas of 
Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala, and the great estuaries 
of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. With Yuca- 
tan and Guatemala went down the splendid cities of Palen- 
que and Uxmal, and others whose sites and inhabitants are 
now in the ocean bed. 

In verification of these ancient traditions, our modern geog- 
raphies tell us that Old Guatemala was destroyed by a water 
volcano in the sixteenth century, and again in the eighteenth 
by an earthquake. The sea-shells on both sides of the Isthmus 
ot Panama are alike, and according to geographical distribution 
of animals, this could only come about by the Isthmus havings 
been once submerged, and after remaining so long enough for 
the intermixture of species, being raised ; and the submarine 
fossils found on the Isthmus prove the hypothesis. 

According to Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, the oldest 
Mexican records date back to nine hundred and twenty-five 
years before Christ, when a strange people came among them. 
In opposition to Winchell's hypothesis of a northwest Mongo- 
lian migration to Mexico, I wish to prove that the Mound- 
builders were the people who came after the cataclysms, and 
that they came from the continent of Atlantis. 

And what hope have I to establish such affinity? "Dan? 
les pays les plus different '," says Benjamin Constant, "chez les 
peuples de moeurs les plus opposees, le sace doce a dii au culte 
des elements et des astres, un pouvoir dont audjour d 'hui nous 
concevons a peine f idee." 

The nearest lands west of Africa, where Plato located the 
continent of Atlantis, are the Canary Islands, the nearest 
being about fifty miles from Africa, and the whole group 
extending about three hundred miles, and separated from the 



20 



continent by a channel more than five thousand feet deep. Of 
all oceanic islands (not continental) discovered by Europeans, 
the Canaries alone were inhabited. Here were found the 
Guanches, now extinct, who, at the time of their discovery, 
were not aware that a continent existed in their neighborhood, 
for, on being asked by the Spanish missionaries how they had 
come to their archipelago, they answered : "God placed us 
on these islands, and then forsook and forgot us." Now who 
were these Guanches? Their islands have never been con- 
nected with Africa, because the channel between them is a 
mile deep, and Wallace, in his "Island Life," has proved that 
any island surrounded by water over five thousand feet deep is of 
volcanic origin, and that is just the clue we are seeking. If crani- 
ometry is a reliable science, the Guanches were not savages, 
but superior to the Egyptians ! According to Prof. Flower's 
measurements, the skull of the English of low grade contains 
1,542 cubic centimeters, the Guanches 1,498, Japanese 
1,486, Chinese 1,424, Italians 1,475, and the Ancient Egyp- 
tians 1,464. That a remnant of a race found on an island in 
mid-ocean should have a better developed brain than many 
continental nations who have made history, is significant. 
We should expect such a people to conquer their neighbors, 
just as is recorded by Plato. And now as to their dispersion. 
When Columbus set sail from Palos in 1492, he steered directly 
for the Canary Islands for repairs. When he left the Cana- 
ries, without any effort of his own the trade winds carried 
his vessels straight to the West Indies. These winds blow 
in this direction all the time. In December, 1 73 1 , a ship 
started from Teneriffe with a cargo of wine for one of the West- 
ern Canaries, and, having only six men on board, they were 
unable to manage the ship, and the trade winds carried them 
straight to Trinidad, on the Island of Cuba, of course. While 
Atlantis was sinking, some of the inhabitants escaped on 
rafts and boats, and, being exactly at the same point at which 
Columbus and the ship's crew started in the path of the trade 
winds, there was nothing to do but wait, and they were 
carried to the West Indies, through the Caribbean and Gulf 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 21 

of Mexico, to Yucatan and Mexico. We can easily see now 
why the oldest civilization of the New World is in Central 
America. Some of these emigrants stopped in the West Indies, 
for the aborigines spoke the same language as the Mayas of 
Yucatan to-day. Some stopped in South America, for Dr. 
Lund, the eminent Swedish naturalist, in the bone caves of 
Minas Geraes, Brazil, found human skulls exactly like those 
of the Mound-builders. 

The sudden destruction of these people recalls the beau- 
tiful lines from Richardson's Geology, on "The Nautilus and 
the Ammorite :" 

TT * * 

"They sailed all day, through creek and bay, 

And traversed the ocean deep ; 
And at night they sank on a coral bed, 

In its fairy bowers to sleep. 

"And the monsters vast, of ages past, 

They beheld in their ocean caves ; 
They saw them ride, in their power and pride, 

And sink in their deep sea graves. 

"And they came at last, to a sea long past ; 

But as they reached its shore, 
The Almighty's breath spoke out in death, 

And the Ammorite breathed no more." 



V. i 
©eductioRs. 

We now proceed to discuss the relation of the Mound- 
builders to the inhabitants of Atlantis, or their immediate 
neighbors, the Egyptians. Dr. Waitz, in his "Anthropology 
of Primitive Peoples, " observes : 1 'The first elements of civili- 
zation, as far as history reaches, always appear as communi- 
cated from one people to another ; and of no people can it be 
proved how, where and when they have become civilized by 
their own inherent power." Now, Winchell in his genealog- 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



ical charts, represents the entire peopling of the Pacific Slope 
from Alaska to Chili by Mongoloid branches, and the world 
knows that the civilization of the Chinese is and has always 
been a petrified fossil. The race is absolutely devoid of civil- 
izing qualities. Their state is founded upon the worship of 
the shades of their ancestors. Their exalted egotism has for 
ages resisted every attempt to force advancement among them, 
and the only thing that we can call development among them 
is atavism. 

To say that such a people gave rise to the Esquimaux, 
is to verify all history ; to say that they are the source of 
the Astec civilization and Inca sun-worship, is to perpetuate 
an anthropological paradox. 

Empiricism alone holds but a secondary place in estab- 
lishing scientific truth, and all a priori reasoning must hold 
precedence, when analogy and affinity would supplement 
the existing links of discontinued evidence. 

Separated by a channel only fifty miles wide, we may 
with justice assume that the civilization of Atlantis and Egypt 
was very similar. Egypt is the only land of the ancient world 
where pyramids are found. On a direct line of the trade winds, 
in Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the Ohio 
Valley, we find other pyramids. In Egypt we find the temple 
emblazoned with hieroglyphics chiseled in the solid rock, 
describing the history of one of the oldest civilizations in 
the world. In Uxmal, Mexico, Copan and Palenque are tab- 
lets, friezes, bas-reliefs, facades and hieroglyphics ; though 
inferior to the Egyptians' in mimetic art, still of the highest 
order, considering this to be the product of the Neolithic Age. 

The Egyptians were the only people of the Old World who 
embalmed their dead. According to the French historian, 
Lucien Bart, the Zapotecs and Chichimecs of the Mexican 
Valley embalmed their chiefs, and if we may believe this 
author, the caves of the Cordilleras are vast museums, as full 
of interest as the catacombs of Rome. 

That the Americans mummified their dead, is proven by 
mummies having been found in Peru and the northwestern 



23 



part of Patagonia. Dr. Aq. Reid has found others which 
prove the relation of Peruvian civilization to that of Patagonia. 

One of these mummies has been deposited in the museum 
of Ratisbon, Bavaria, and another was sent to the Smithsonian 
Institute, {vid. Aq. Reid, Smithsonian Annual Report, 1862, 
pp. 87, 426.) This mummy led to the remark of Alexander 
Winchell : "The humid atmosphere of Patagonia leads to 
the inference that the mummification of the dead was prac- 
ticed under the influence of some controlling motive, which 
must have been inherited from ancestors dwelling in a more 
propitious clime, and from which even the dripping mete- 
orology of Patagonia was insufficient to eradicate/' The 
Egyptians were accurate astrologers and astronomers. They 
accurately calculated eclipses and the reappearances of stars 
whose reappearance would require over a thousand years, and 
the pyramids are set to the cardinal points. Less than a 
hundred years ago, the great Calendar Stone of the Astecs 
was dug up, in the City of Mexico. It is of a solid piece of 
porphyry, and weighs fifty tons. It was brought many leagues, 
across a broken country, without beasts of burden, and 
Bustamente states that ten thousand men were employed in 
its transportation. The Calendar Stone was buried when 
Cortez sacked the city of Tenochtitlan, and in itself constitutes 
a history. From it we learn that the Astecs were astrologers, 
astronomers, and calculated eclipses, and knew the solstices 
of the sun. They divided the year into eighteen months 
of twenty days each, and like the ancient Egyptians, had five 
complementary days to make out the three hundred and sixty- 
five, and every fifty-two years they threw in twelve and one- 
half days for leap year. Like the Persians and Egyptians, 
a cycle of fifty-two years, or "an age, " was represented by a 
serpent, so prominent in ancient mythology. Their astrolog- 
ical year was divided into months of thirteen days each, and 
there were thirteen years in their indications, which contained 
each three hundred and sixty-five periods of thirteen days. 
It is also curious, that their number of lunar months 
of thirteen days, contained in a cycle of fifty-two years, with 



24 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



the intercalation of thirteen (twelve and one-half) days, should 
correspond exactly with the number of years in a great Sothic 
period of the Egyptians, viz : — fourteen hundred and ninety- 
one. 

Is it reasonable to suppose that this strange affinity with 
Egyptian civilization was accidental ? or that a Turanian 
branch independently evolved itself into a counterpart of 
Hamitic Berbers? Hardly. 

The ideographic paintings of the Astecs or Mound-builders 
preserve traditions of the creation of the world, a universal 
flood, confusion of tongues and dispersion of men, and that a 
single man and woman saved themselves in a boat which landed 
near Mount Colhuacan, and that all their children were born 
deaf, and remained so till a dove one day, from the top of a 
tree, taught them each in a different tongue. All' Astec tra- 
ditions, without exception, insist that they came from a far-off 
island called Aztlan (Atlantis). Dr. Lapham, in his "An- 
tiquities of Wisconsin, " locates "Azatland" in Wisconsin, on 
account of the large number of effigy mounds found there, 
and Dr. Foster, in his "Prehistoric Races," figures these 
mounds called ' "Azatland, " but the Astec painting pub- 
lished by Gemelle Carera, in his Giro del Mondo, has hiero- 
glyphics representing their departure from Aztlan in canoes 
and on rafts, after the confusion of tongues, and a teocalli, or 
temple, by the side of a palm-tree. Now we all know palms 
do not grow in Wisconsin, but they do grow in Africa. 

Max Muller, the world's greatest authority in philology* 
says, that of all indices to the mysteries of the ancient world, 
language is the most satisfactory, and the only evidence worth 
listening to with regard to ante-historic periods. 

If we class the languages of the world into groups accord- 
ing to cognation, we find the Aryan languages comprising 
the Indian, Persian (Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin group (Italian, 
Wallachian, Provencal, French, Portuguese and Spanish), 
Slavonic (Russian), Teutonic (English), and the Keltic or 
Welsh, of which the oldest is the Sanskrit and Zend. 

The Semitic group comprises the Hebrew, Phoenician, 



2w 



Assyrian and Arabic, while the Babylonian and Chinese stand 
alone. The Aryan and Semitic form a class known as the 
inflectional, and are the only languages of the world that are 
adapted to and possess a literature, and that have advanced 
the progress of the world in religion, arts, or sciences. 

Though springing from a common center, they have gram- 
matical structures that prevent the one being derived from 
the other. The Semitic branched southward and westward, 
and was the language of the Chaldee, Arab, Hebrew and 
Egyptian, the latter sometimes classed as Hamitic. The 
Chinese is an inorganic language, monosyllabic, and destitute 
of all grammar. The nouns have no number, declensions 
or cases, and the verbs are without conjugation through 
moods, tenses and persons. All Mongoloid races that 
reached North America must have done so by Behring's 
Strait, and all such races or descendants would undoubt- 
edly have a trace of their parental language. If the 
Mound-builders or Astecs were derived from Mongoloids, we 
should expect a monosyllabic language, but, on the contrary, 
"The Astec language has more diminutives and augment- 
atives than the Italian, and its substantives and verbs are 
more numerous than in any other language. " Another proof 
of its wealth is, that when missionaries first went among them, 
they found no trouble in expressing abstract ideas like 
religion, virtue, etc. 

The Sanskrit word God is Devan ; the Latin, Dens ; the 
Greek, 0ioc, and the Astec word is TeotL Whether this 
similarity in sound and spelling was accidental or constitu- 
tional, I know not, but comparative philology recognizes 
radical rather than phonetic affinities. 

The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls was 
the ruling passion among the Astecs. Whether this was the 
fruition of all polytheistic religions, or the retention of pri- 
mordial culture, I know not; but we know the Egyptians 
embalmed their dead, lest the dissolution of the body would 
destroy also the soul, and the greatest desecration that could 
befall the ancient Greeks and Romans was the refusal of 



26 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



burial, because the soul of him thus uncared for wandered 
thenceforth as a disembodied ghost. We read in Homer's 
"Iliad" how the dead Patroclus comes to the sleeping Achilles, 
who tries in vain to grasp him with loving arms, but the soul, 
like smoke, flits away below the earth. How Hermo- 
timos, the seer, used to go out of his body, till at last, his 
soul, coming back from a spirit journey, found that his wife 
had burnt his body on a funeral pile, and that he had become 
a bodyless ghost. How Odysseus visits the bloodless ghosts 
in Hades, and the shadows of the dead in Purgatory won- 
dered to see the body of Dante there, which stopped the 
sunlight and cast a shadow. 

This idea of the phantom life of souls as shades and 
shadows constitutes the higher philosophy of the transcen- 
dental metaphysics of the ancient Greeks, whose exponent 
was Pythagoras. 

Forbearing to enter here upon the religious status of the 
Astecs, we turn again to their language. If we are to believe 
the highest authority on these subjects, we are ready to 
prove that the Atlas Mountains and Atlantic Ocean, while 
known to the Greeks a thousand years before Christ, still 
belong to the Nahuatl language in North America. 

The words Atlas and Atlantic have no satisfactory etymol- 
ogy in any language in Europe or Asia, and we are certain 
no such roots are found in the Greek; but in the Nahuatl 
language we find their homes. 

The consonants most used are /, t, x, z ; next the sounds 
tl and tz ; but /, the most frequent used, is never found at the 
beginning of a word. 

The radicals a, atl, which signify water, atlan, on the bor- 
der or amid the water, give us the adjective Atlantic, per- 
taining to the land, Aztlan (or Atlantis), in the midst of the 
water. We have also atlaca, to hurl or dart from the water, 
whose preterite makes atlaz. In the time of Columbus a 
city named Atlan existed on the Gulf of Darien, with a 
good harbor, but now it is only a small pueblo named Ada. 

Undoubtedly we have reached the fountain-head. The near- 



The Origin of Ike Mound Builders. 



27 



est point of land from the Island of " Atlantis " was the 
Atlas Mountains, which at that distance would seem to be 
darted up from the water; from their Atlantis, in the midst of 
the water. One has but to look on the map of Mexico 
to-day, and see that my theory is supported by such words as 
Tlascoran, Tlascala, Tlatlanquitepec, Tlascopan, Tenoch- 
titlan* Chialinitzla, Yxtacamaxtitlan, Popocatapetl, etc., and 
scores of others, which prove that those combinations of 
liquids and consonants are at home only in the Nahuatl coun- 
tries ; ergo, the Atlas Mountains and Atlantic Ocean and 
4i Atlatis" were named by these people before their conti- 
nent was destroyed. 



Time is the only alembic to test the true character of great 
men or deeds. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and 
Hugo are the few select representatives whom the world 
acknowledges as its spokesmen. Shakespeare was in his 
grave a hundred years before he spoke authoritatively to the 
world, and with Dante it was no better. Ages had passed 
away before the seven cities of Greece warred for the honor of 
Homer's birthplace, but for twenty-six centuries has the 
"Siege of Troy" stood out in profile as the model epic of the 
world, but of doubtful veracity because of its antiquity ; 
but Dr. Schliemann's excavations seem destined yet to find 
the funeral pyre of Patroclus, surrounded by the remains of 
Trojan captives. 

Even within the last twelve months has the French archae- 
ologist, M. Marcel Dieulafay, brought to light the ancient 
city ofSusa, and we may now behold the palace ofArtaxerxes 



VI. 




"Antiquity appears to have begun 
Long after their primeval race was run." 



28 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



Mnemon, whose foundation was laid by Xerxes I. 485 B. C. ; 
and now, after twenty-three centuries, the Bible student may 
take his Bible in his hand and turn to the Book of Esther and 
read, while the guide in the ancient capital of Persia points 
to this spot where Mordecai sat, to that spot where Haman 
was hanged, to this court where the lovely Esther was crowned 
queen, and whence the sorrowing Vashti departed, as the 
unfortunate Hebe, cupbearer of Jove, before the victorious 
Ganymede. 

Plato recorded the sad fate of Atlantis nearly five hundred 
years before Christ, and Solon had recorded the same in a poem 
two hundred years before. Plato says the expedition against 
Egypt took place during the reigns of the Athenian kings, 
Cecrops and Erechtheus, and according to the "Marble of 
Paros," those kings ruled in 1582 B. C. and 1409 B. C, 
which is not a great deal more ancient than the siege of 
Troy. 

Though this is ancient history, we have as much right to 
accept Plato's history as Homer's, if it can be established. 

The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg claims that Mexican 
chronology dates back two thousand eight hundred and 
fourteen years. Because America was latest discovered, it 
is the popular opinion that it should have been the latest 
developed, but there is evidence sufficient that the New 
World is in every sense the oldest. 

We know that this continent was once covered with gla- 
ciers as low down as New Jersey and the Ohio River. 
According to Dr. Croll, glaciation is brought about by the 
combined effect of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit and 
the precession of the equinoxes, which makes the distance 
of our planet from the sun vary considerably during the 
year. We are three million miles nearer the sun in winter than 
in summer, while the reverse is the case in the Southern 
Hemisphere. If our winter now were long as our summer, 
and we were to continue three million miles nearer the 
sun in the winter, a decided change would occur, and our 
winters would grow longer and colder, and our summers 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



29 



shorter and hotter. Now the precession of the equinoxes 
and the motion of aphelion actually bring this about every 
ten thousand five hundred years, and the condition of the two 
hemispheres is reversed as regards their glaciation, and this 
reversion has been going on during all geologic time. 

But the eccentricity itself of the earth in its orbit between 
perihelion and aphelion varies, and since the eccentricity is 
now at its minimum, three million miles, we infer that our last 
glacial epoch occurred ten thousand five hundred years ago, 
and the ice mantle has retreated from 39 0 in New Jersey to 61 0 
in Southern Greenland, which is now covered by a glacier 
twelve hundred miles long, four hundred miles wide, and a 
mile thick, while the ice in the Southern Hemisphere has 
increased to several miles in thickness, and to such extent, 
that the nearest point to the South Pole Sir Ross was able to 
reach, was still fourteen hundred miles from the Pole. 

While the St. Lawrence and the area of the Great Lakes 
were under these glaciers, of course there could have been rto 
outlet to the Atlantic of the waters, which were forced by 
the Alleghenies to flow to the Gulf, at the time of the great 
thaw ten thousand years ago, and the St. Lawrence could only 
have been formed after the ice had retreated beyond the Great 
Lake areas. Since that period the Niagara has been cutting 
its way from Lake Ontario through the solid limestone of the 
Upper Silurian Period, until the Falls of Niagara are now 
seven miles from the lake. Dana estimates that the river has cut 
its way at the rate of a toot a year, which would make it thirty- 
five thousand years cutting its channel. Sir Charles Lyell, 
as quoted in Hugh Miller's ' 'Testimony of the Rocks," esti- 
mates the rate at fifty yards in forty years, which would 
make it ten thousand years, which agrees ex ictly with the time 
the glacier crossed the Great Lakes. However long it was, man 
was here then, for a tooth of a man has been found with that of a 
mammoth in the Drift of the Niagara, and Dr. Abbott has 
found bones of the mastodon and the wisdom tooth of a man, 
fourteen feet under the gravel of the Delaware, and their 



30 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



rolled and abraded surfaces prove them either pre-glacial or 
contemporaneous with glaciers. 

While the great glaciers were breaking up at the head-waters 
of the Platte, Yellowstone and Missouri, the flooded rivers 
dropped their sediment in the vast inundated lakes, whose rich 
bottoms formed the loess which so well characterizes the 
fertile prairie soil of the Western States to-day. 

In Nebraska, stone arrow-heads and the bones of the 
ancient elephant were found thirty feet under the loess, and in 
Greene County, Illinois, a well was dug seventy-two feet 
through the loess, when a stone hatchet was found, proving: 
that the hatchet was dropped there when Illinois was covered 
by a lake over which the rude hunter paddled his canoe. 

Dr. Koch, of St. Louis, found the bones of the mastodon 
in the Osage Valley in Missouri, which was killed while 
mired down, by fire being built around it, which consumed 
nearly all the bones of the animal except the legs and toes. 
The presence of ashes and stones proves conclusively that the 
huge animal met his death at the hands of man. 

One other instance to prove that man existed on this conti- 
nent in the Pliocene Epoch : Dr. Winslow sent to the Natural 
History Society, of Boston, a skull of a human being found 
in a shaft in California one hundred and eighty feet deep, and, 
under five successive layers of volcanic lava and tufa and 
four layers of auriferous gravel. To quote from Foster's 
"Prehistoric Times": "Since the introduction, then, of man 
on this continent, the physical features as well as the climate 
have undergone great changes. The volcanic peaks of the 
Sierra Nevadas have been lifted up, the glaciers have disap- 
peared, the great canons themselves have been excavated in 
the solid rock, and what then were the beds of streams, now 
form the Table Mountains." Admitting this skull to be Plio- 
cene, we have a human bone in America older than the oldest 
human relics found on the continent of Europe. When we 
consider that this skull was in situ before the mainland of 
the Sierras was uplifted by volcanic upheavals, accompanied 
by flaming rivers of molten lava, followed by the glacial night 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



31 



of cold, ice and snow, we no longer believe that the first 
inhabitants of North America crossed Behring's Strait from 
Asia. 

We have argued that the Mound-builders both entered 
and left the Mississippi Valley by the south, and that the 
Red Indian entered by Florida from the Antilles, as imple- 
ments found in Jamaica correspond with those found in Vene- 
zuela, and DeSoto found a higher civilization among the 
Natchez tribes of the South than was found among any others. 

According to the Icelandic sagas, Lief and Bjorn reached 
Labrador about the year iooo A. D. and found a 
dwarfish race of men "of short stature," whom they called 
skraelings. We know well such terms could not apply to 
the stately Algonquin warriors the Europeans found in New 
England. No; these were Esquimaux, whom the warlike 
Indians had compelled to follow the retreat of the glaciers 
toward the Land of the Midnight Sun. They crossed to the 
Great Lakes and compelled the peaceful Mound-builders to 
go southward. They crossed the Rocky Mountains and drove 
the inhabitants of the Sierras also. They crowded them into 
the gorges and canons of Colorado, Utah and Arizona. The 
frightened refugees were driven to the necessity of building 
dwellings in the overhanging cliffs of rivers, and these nests of 
human swallows are now known as the " Cliff-dwellers" of 
the Colorado and Hili. 

They were not allowed to stay here. Driven by their 
relentless hunters, they moved onward to the plateaus of 
Arizona and cactus plains of New Mexico, where, huddled 
up between the tribes of Mexico on the south, and the hunting 
Indians behind them, they built the pueblos and "The Seven 
Cities of Cibola." The archaeological remains prove to us 
to-day that New Mexico was as thickly settled by these miser- 
able fugitives as Pennsylvania or Delaware. The mournful 
spectacle to-day of the adobe pueblos along the Pecos and 
Rio Grande, is the closing chapter of a history written in 
blood, and sealed by the life of a nation, with characters for- 
ever enigmatical to the civilized world. 



32 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



VII. 

(Lonclusion. 



" And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked 
How first this world and face of things began, 
And what before thy memory was done 
From the beginning. " 

The former existence of Atlantis is an hypothesis, it is true, 
but so is the existence of Lemuria, and nearly every scientist 
of Europe believes that a continent once existed in the Indian 
Ocean between Madagascar and India, and the proof is not 
wanting - . 

On the Island of Madagascar are found thirty-three species 
of monkeys, called Lemurs, which are not found in Africa, 
nor in any other part of the globe, except Ceylon, India, 
and the Malay Archipelago. Because the Lemurs are found 
only in this region, Sclater, the Englishzoologist, has called 
the sunken continent "Lemuria." 

Between Madagascar and India are a number of submerged 
banks of less than one thousand fathoms deep, which a slight 
elevation would make comparative easy stages of communi- 
cation between Madagascar and India for all animals. An 
elevation of three hundred feet would unite Java, Sumatra 
and Borneo into one great peninsula of the Asiatic continent. 

The Island of Madagascar is two hundred and fifty miles 
wide and one thousand miles long, and is separated from 
Africa by the Mozambique Channel, only two hundred 
and fifty miles wide. Africa has monkeys, apes, and 
baboons ; also lions, leopards, hyenas, zebras, rhinocerii, 
elephants, buffaloes, giraffes, and many species of deer 
and antelopes; but strange to say, not one of these animals 
is found in Madagascar, or anything like them. There are 
in Madagascar, according to Wallace's "Island Life," and 
Dr. Hartlaub's "Birds of Madagascar," one hundred species 
of land birds, and only four or five have any kindred in Africa ; 
but in Malaysia and India we find identical species, and on 



The Origin of the Mound .Builders. 



the islands of Mauritius, Rodriguez, Bourbon and the Sey- 
chelles group we find so many curious birds without wings, 
with similar kindred in Madagascar, that we know these 
islands have been connected. 

The Seychelles group, two hundred by three hundred miles 
in extent, are seven hundred miles northeast from Mada- 
gascar, and have fifteen peculiar species of birds, while three 
of them are found in Madagascar, and some have kindred in 
India. 

There are five species of lizards which are found in Mauri- 
tius, Bourbon, Rodriguez and Ceylon, and even to the Phil- 
ippine Islands. 

The Mascarene group contains one thousand and fifty-eight 
species of plants, of which sixty-six are found in Africa but 
not in Asia, and eighty-six are found in Asia and not in 
Africa, showing a closer relation to Asia than to Africa. 
Milne-Edwards has even surmised a "Mascarene" continent, 
to include all the outlying islands around Madagascar. 
Beccari, in his work on the geographical distribution of 
palms, after noting the difficulties of the dispersion of the 
fruits, reaches the conclusion that, when we find two conge- 
neric species of palms on widely separated lands, it is reason- 
able to infer that these lands have been united. On the 
Mascarene Islands, in Ceylon, the Nicobars, at Singapore, on 
the Malaccas, New Guinea, in Australia and Polynesia occur 
various species of Phycliosperma, all very difficult of dissemi- 
nation, and hence could have reached their present habitat 
only by being connected by intervening lands now in the 
ocean bed. Winchell, in his ' 'Pre-Adamites, " states among his 
principles: 1st, The doctrine of pre-Adamites is entirely con- 
sonant with the fundamental principles of Biblical Christianity; 
2, A. chain of profound relationship runs through the consti- 
tution of all races, and they may be regarded as genealogically 
connected together; 3d, The initial point of the genealogical 
line may be located in Lemuria. 

Peschell, in his "Races of Man," says: "This continent, 
which would correspond with the Indian Ethiopia of Claudius 



34 



The Orinin of fhe Mound Builders. 



Ptolemaeus, is required by anthropology, for we can then 
conceive how the inferior populations of Australia and India, 
the Papuans of the East India Islands, and lastly the Negroes, 
would thus be enabled to reach their- present abode by dry 
land." The selection of this spot is far more orthodox than it 
might at the first glance appear, for we here find ourselves in 
the neighborhood of the four enigmatical rivers of the scrip- 
tural Eden — in the vicinity of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris and 
Indus. By the gradual submergence of Lemuria, the expul- 
sion from Paradise would also be inexorably accomplished." 
To this he adds the arguments of such ecclesiastical writers as 
Eactantius, the venerable Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, Cosmas 
Indicopleustes and the anonymous geographer of Ravenna. 
In the second chapter of Genesis we read : "A river went out 
of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted 
and came into four heads." Whether such a river exists 
to-day, I know not. Dr. McCausland, in his "Adam and 
Adamite," believes that Eden was on the west bank of the 
modern Euphrates, near the Persian Gulf. He says the 
Pison river of Genesis, in conjunction with the modern 
Karun, is the Pasitigris of the ancients, which runs 
through the country of Evilat or Havillah, and flows into the 
Euphrates before it falls into the Persian Gulf. The second 
is the modern Karashu, the Gyndes of the ancients, which 
traverses the land of Cush. The Hiddekel is plainly the 
Tigris, and is designated in Daniel x. 4, and runs westward to 
Assyria. 

We know by the remains of sea-shells that the Great Desert 
of Sahara was once the bottom of the ocean, and its eleva- 
tion may have been consonant with and the direct cause of 
the submergence of Lemuria. 

Alfred Wallace says none but the unscientific have revived 
Atlantis since Darwin's ''Origin of Species" and Prof. Asa 
Grey on "The Affinity of North American and Asiatic Floras." 
It is not my desire to pose as unscientific, nor to construct a 
highway for the Polearctic or Nearctic fauna and flora, but to 
prove that the anthropological and ethnological affinities of 



The Origin of the Mound Builders. 



35 



the Nahuatl tribes deserve a newer and better classification ; 
and if the restoration of Atlantis will accomplish that end, 
then let the theory stand or fall on its merits. 

If Lemuria can be established by affinity, why not accept 
as much of such collateral evidence concerning Atlantis as is 
compatible with science. 

The Pacific Ocean is not stormy. Winchell says South 
America was peopled by Mongoloids from the Polynesian 
Islands. Since no storms prevail there, the theory would 
indicate a design on the inhabitants to seek new shores, which 
lay so many hundred miles away, across a sea where storms 
would never carry them by accident ; but in the peopling of 
Central America from the East, the stormy Atlantic and 
unvarying trade winds would carry any unwary voyager who 
strayed too far from shore. As to the establishing of scientific 
data in support of Atlantis, I have to add that it is probably 
a short while before the acceptance will be as universal as 
Lemuria. 

In 1873 Her Majesty's ship Challenger made soundings in 
the Atlantic off the north coast of Africa, and in 1874 the 
German frigate Gazelle made further soundings in the same 
region. 

In 1877 Commander Gorringe, of the U. S. sloop Gettys- 
burgy discovered, about one hundred and fifty miles from the 
Straits of Gibraltar, an immense bed of pink coral in thirty- 
two fathoms of water. 

"These various series of soundings, when located on a map, 
indicate the existence of an extended bank of comparatively 
shallow water, in the midst of which the Canaries and the 
Madeiras rise to the surface. The location of the newly dis- 
covered mountain in the Atlantic lies within the fifteen-thou- 
sand-fathom line, and here is probably the stump of the 
ancient Atlantis/' 



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